Tiffany Burress, a Republican congressional candidate in the 9th congressional district, looks poised to remain on the ballot after a challenge to her nominating petitions.
The campaign manager of Rosie Pino, the other Republican looking to challenge Rep. Nellie Pou (D-North Haledon), filed a challenge to Burress’ 919 signatures last week. In a Monday morning court hearing, a judge indeed disqualified dozens of signatures, but said he did not see a pattern of irregularity that would require removing hundreds more signatures.
Administrative Law Judge Ernest Bongiovanni did not issue a decision from the bench, but did say he would issue an opinion shortly. He did state multiple times, however, that he didn’t see “sufficient” evidence of a pattern of signature-collection violations that would warrant Burress’ disqualification.
“I’m really going on the basis of what’s been presented to me, and it’s just insufficient evidence of any kind of a pattern that I’d be concerned about, or anybody should be concerned about,” Bongiovanni said. “And I know the nature of how these petitions are circulated.”
Bongiovanni disqualified dozens of Burress’ signatures. In one case, a petition collector edited a 2025 sheet to show a 2026 date, a move the judge found illegal, disqualifying 29 of those signatures. In another instance, a collector gathered several signatures before ultimately leaving the campaign; another collector, Joseph Al-Adam, ended up signing their name on the sheet instead, which Bongiovanni also found disqualifying. He also disqualified a group of signatures collected when Al-Adam was not physically present.
Bongiovanni ultimately disqualified 76 petitions in those matters. More than another 200 faced challenges on various grounds, including individual ineligibility based on party registration. But even if all those challenges were upheld, it would not have pushed Burress below the 500-signature threshold to reach the ballot.
Instead, the Pino campaign argued that the various petition circulator issues presented a pattern of “pervasive fraud and procedural illegality” that warranted the complete disqualification of signatures collected by Al-Adam.
“There’s such a pattern here of irregularity, we think the circulator, Mr. Joseph Al-Adam, should be rejected,” said attorney Ted Maciag.
Bongiovanni disagreed.
“I don’t think there’s sufficient evidence to show a pattern of fraud,” he said. “There’s not even sufficient evidence that, on its face, shows that the … petitions were not properly circulated. I think you would need a lot more than that.”
March 31 update: In an official opinion issued Tuesday, Bongiovanni called the accusations of widespread fraud “flimsy.” He denied the attempt to disqualify all of Al-Adam’s signatures.
Bongiovanni does not make the final decision on the appeal. That authority rests with Secretary of State Dale Caldwell. You can read his opinion here.
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